The following are the outputs of the captioning taken during an IGF intervention. Although it is largely accurate, in some cases it may be incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors. It is posted as an aid, but should not be treated as an authoritative record.
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>> MODERATOR: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to this session on the regional perspectives on digital governance. I am Nadia Tjahja, and I'm a PHD fellow at the United Nations University, and I’m very happy to welcome our currently three speakers, Nibal Idlebi from UNESCWA who's joining us online, Luis Barbosa from UNU‑EGOV, who is sitting here on my left, and Jamal Shahin, to my left. I'm alo happy to introduce our online moderator Morten Meyerhoff Nielsen so if you are online and would like to ask any questions, please do not hesitate to leave us any questions in the box so that we can have an active discussion about today's session.
In today's session, we would like to address three key questions: How can you and regional commissions and other regional actors contribute towards managing the Global Public Good? The second question that we would like to address is what ways do regional actors mitigate the current shift in discourse and policy toward national reactions or so‑called digital sovereignty. And lastly, what differences exist between global discourses on cooperation and action and beyond.
If you have any questions, doubts, solutions, please do come up and ask us a question online or ask us a question by coming up to the microphones in the room. We are very happy for you to join the discussion. We are keen to listen to the input from the wider global audience.
So we'll start with question 1, and then we'll ask Jamal Shahin to start preparing his first thoughts towards this. How can UN regional commissions and other regional actors contribute towards managing this Global Public Good? Perhaps you can give a little bit of an introduction to how we can look at this concept of Global Public Good. Jamal.
>> JAMAL SHAHIN: Thanks, Nadia, and we are happy to be here and participating in this open forum. In the format of the open forum, I should be brief and I've already taken up my two minutes, but in the spirit of this, I would like to rather just raise a few minutes and then pass the baton on to my colleagues. So we ask the question about governing Global Public Good, and I want to get to that, that kind of unpacking that concept later on, but maybe I could start by saying that the intention behind this panel and the discussion that we're having here is to really try and address how global issues can be addressed more successfully at the regional level or can be started to be implemented at the regional level. We talked about UN region commissions and we're happy that Nibal is on the call to share her experiences with this. But there’s also different regional actors that play a role. So in addition to the UN regional commissions, you have technical actors who work at the regional levels, such as the Internet registries. You have also economic actors that work at the regional level such as the European Union or different regional trade associations that work together, and I think that's one of the things, you know, the beauty of the diversity of this idea of how regional plays in there.
At UNU-CRIS is where both Nadia and I work. We have been working on a project financed by Free University of Brussels where we look at global and regional and multistakeholder institutions, and we look specifically at those kinds of institutions that engage with different actors rather than a – or a multitude of actors rather than looking very much at the diplomatic or economic framing themselves. And in that, we actually tried to develop -- or one of the things that we try to do was also look at how norms, principles, and practices flow from the local level to the regional level, and we term this "cascading governance" and we look at how these ideas that are transmitted at the global level can be pushed through. Some scholars have termed this "following through on policy" or, "following the policy," let's say.
This allows for specific flavours of those global norms to emerge in the regional setting, and that is one of the things that we're seeing in the contemporary global situation where we're seeing that global norms sometimes don't really hit the floor running when it comes to different national implementations, and so we think that using regional commissions as a kind of translator of these local norms can help that. I think there's a few caveats that we need to add to this idea, so regions must share common interests and values, and they must be able to adopt -- and the actors that play within those regions must be able to adopt those flavours of global norms in similar ways.
I said I'd get back to the Global Public Good issue. We're talking about Global Public Goods, right, and the IGF has shown, I mean, just walking around and participating in some of the panels today, you realise that the notion of the Internet as a Global Public Good is actually quite contested. We don't have the same kind of feeling that we maybe had 20 years ago in this space. And so I think that's one of the things we also need to address when looking at how regions actually interact with Internet governance and the sphere of the digital in general. My computer turned off, but we do know that the notion of the global interconnected network is a Global Public Good, and that needs to be ‑‑ we need to make sure that we're clear in what we're actually trying to govern or what we're actually trying to cascade in our governance mechanisms.
I think Nibal and Luis will have much more to say about this framing how that plays out in different regional and national settings. And I've spent five minutes. I'll turn it over now.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you for sharing your kind of opening insights regarding the question, and I would like to move to Luis Barbosa. Could you share your remarks?
>> LUIS BARBOSA: Sure. Good morning, thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be here. Of course, we have a more practical experience, we have not this kind of more conceptualized project. But I will start to say that there was a well-known mantra from the '70s, think globally, act locally, if you remember, that although it was coined for very different purpose, that still makes sense in this context.
Actually, there are a number of fundamental issues and global challenges that require to be articulated at the broader, even intercontinental level, and Mactar has not shown up until now but I think the African case it's particularly significant. Africa is witnessing an ever-increasing digital divide, insufficient digital infrastructures often targeted by predatory private interests from the West or China or both. And actually the fact that the African Union, the Digital Transformation Agenda has put one of its main objectives to have a continental fund and investment for supporting additional infrastructure and IGF could see it as the same kind of statement is a message very clear for us.
We have some experience mainly working with countries but we also have some experience in trying to work at the more regional interconnected level. Some years ago, we managed a big project within Africa, also other countries, and later I can share some lessons learned from that process. And this year, we actually what we call the West Africa Digital Governance Forum as a way to try to bring countries on the same table, try to discuss some pressing issues and mainly to foster synergies and discuss what strategies can be drawn at at more integrated level. Just two remarks, and I will end up for now. Although this regional, continental, international level is really very important, one of the lessons learned that we have is that even if countries share a number of common problems and common concerns, they need to be addressed in different ways in different context. And this contextualisation is something that cannot be swept under the carpet when we discuss an integration level. Multistakeholder involvement in concrete, contextualised use, would appropriate co-creation mechanisms for strategies and action plans, is something very essential and that should be taken into account if you want to think at the more global, global level.
And the second issue is that actually I think maybe -- there's certainly more interesting things to say but I think integration or even before integration and sort of coordination efforts are often difficult to achieve and they require consensualised objectives and more than that, consensualised practices, and not only on the political level. Political will, accordance of policies is also is very important but also at level of motivating citizens in Civil Society in the different countries for that, so that strategies, processes, policies can be validated, motivated, and we can build trust around these things, and trust is actually something that moves people. For example, in Kepfurt, we work across borders, broader issue, more than that is diaspora problem that goes from Europe to African countries and even to the states, so we try to multidivide the design of the portals that somehow allow these people to have their lives simplified.
And the presence of the citizens of the associations dealing with diaspora in the process at different levels, in Portugal, in Kepfurt, even in the States was very important for the success of this initiative, so I will do this, two remarks, things requires the clear but political but also social civic wheel to go around, and anything we do should be articulated within the context of the concrete context of the countries.
>> MODERATOR: Thank you very much. It's important to be able to share these also kind of practical examples of how things are working on the ground and kind of the feelings that we're engaging with, that it's not always about the manner in which we design concepts and ideas and how we have these perspectives but also learn from lived experiences, and this is why I would like to go to our online speaker, Nibal Idlebi from UNESCWA, please, I would love to hear your remarks.
>> Sorry, there seems to be a small problem with Nibal picking up the connection. We are trying to let her into the forum. She's there but she is not picking up.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: It seems our online speaker is not available right now. So I just wanted to encourage all the people who just joined us here in the room and also those joining us online, we were looking at three questions here today, and if you have any comments or thoughts or doubts or even perhaps solutions or what you want to see for the future, we do encourage you to accompany and join at the table or the microphones so we can have a little bit of a discussion about these three questions.
So the first question that we started with was how UN regional commissions and other regional actors can contribute towards managing the Global Public Good, and we heard from Jamal Shahin from UNU‑CRIS and Luis Barbosa from UNU‑EGOV. But then we will also look at question 2, to examine the ways regional actors can mitigate the current shift in discourse in policy towards national reactions or so‑called digital sovereignty. Perhaps we'll go into this second part and perhaps you could even bridge between the two questions, Jamal Shahin, please.
>> JAMAL SHAHIN: Thanks, Nadia. OK, so yeah, so the ways regional actors can mitigate this shift towards the national reaction -- well, we've heard from Luis that actually these national implementations are actually quite crucial so the lived experiences as you mentioned, Nadia, and kind of the national way of implementing this is actually very important, but I would want to make an argument for actually this kind of, as I mentioned before, this cascading, so there's bringing down of the different norms from the global to the local via the regional.
One of the reasons why I think this also has a very important role to play in the discussions that we have is that although we talk about the Internet or the connected digital network as a Global Public Good, there are many instances in which national states or national actors are actually taking it upon themselves to manage this Global Public Good in different ways, and that may be on different layers in the Internet field.
>> Nibal should be with us now.
>> NIBAL IDLEBI: Yes, good morning, OK? There is problem in the video but I'm here. Good morning, everyone, and I'm really happy that we are here. I mean, it's early in the morning in Beirut but, I mean, I'm here.
And thank you for including UNESCWA in this discussion, and I would like to say that, in fact, the regional aspect and the public good and especially Internet and Internet governance is really important and ESCWA, we have been working on this aspect since very long time, in fact, and we have noticed the importance of regional aspect as compared also to international.
Let me say how we -- maybe you are aware and some people are listening and aware that ESCWA together with the League of Arab State, we have created what we call Arab IGF which is a regional platform for discussing all issues relating to Internet governance. And in this regard, we have noticed the importance to discuss, to disseminate, to promote the global idea at regional level. It was really, I mean, very important because people, many people, or many stakeholders in the national level are not aware about some concepts, or they really feel far away from the international discussion or the global discussion in this regard. Therefore, I believe the first and the most maybe -- the first rule in this regard was really to disseminate the idea, to discuss the idea, to explain some idea which are taking place at the global level, and that we need to be first of all to be explained, and to be contextualised, I would say, considering the regional perspective, the regional social dimension, and the political dimension in some cases to reflect on how this will be integrated, how it can be integrated.
And then, I mean, then the prioritisation at the regional level also it is really very important aspect we discovered maybe some challenges or some idea that are taking place and maybe they have a high priority at international level. They might be different at regional level because maybe some basics are not yet well established at the regional level, and in this case in the Arab region. Because ESCWA is working on the Arab region level. And the prioritisation, it is really very important also and to see what matters for the region considering the level of development. Although sometimes we have ‑‑ we witnessed some issues because the region itself is not harmonised in terms of development in many areas, I mean, in technology and in some other areas as well.
Then it is -- really this prioritisation is really not important, and it is important to reflect it at the global level. that I would say that the regional dimension is important for two ways. For taking the global and making contextualisation to the regional level but also to be the voice of the region in the international fora and to make the voice of regional aspect be heard at the global level because the matters might be different and might be ‑‑ might reflect other dimension that might not be really at the international dimension discussed well. For example, one of the issues that we have identified in our last Internet Governance Forum, it was access, I mean, meaningful access to Internet, I mean. And maybe this access is not really a problem in Europe or in the western countries, it is still a measured and a measured problem in some Arab countries, not all, in some Arab countries.
I will not spend too much time but, I mean, in addition to what I have said then I believe the regional commission and in this case ESCWA, we have made a kind of roadmap for the public good and for the Internet and for the Arab vision roadmap on how to enhance the Internet governance and how to tackle all the issues that are discussed at the international fora. Legislation was very important. For example, privacy. Even cybersecurity is very important then because it still may be not well quite mature in many countries in the region.
And then believe to start, I mean, as the first dimension, I repeat needs to be nation promotion and also discussion prioritisation is really very important in explaining. The discussion with the international – with regional stakeholder, I would say it doesn't work alone. We are interacting with all regional stakeholder with all original association, either professional or NGO or even private sector association or academia sometimes and, of course, with the government, which are the main stakeholder, but we include all other stakeholder, including use, I mean, as an association for use.
I think I will stop here from now and I will return back to other aspect later on.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Well, thank you very much for your insights, and I find it very important what you raised regarding these two ways, the first one providing the context in which these concepts and ideas are on a regional level but also representing the voice of that region and it's admirable what you're doing with the Arab IGF and what you were saying about the roadmap. We would love it if you could leave us the link in the Zoom chat and also send that to us so we could at that to the IGF web page so people can actually learn what is this roadmap and what from your region have you found is progressive ‑‑ will allow us to progress towards a more inclusive future.
Then I would like to go into question 2. Question 2 looked at examining the ways in which regional actors can mitigate the current shift in discourse in policy towards national reaction, so‑called digital sovereignty. I would like to return to Jamal Shahin to make any further comments if he wishes.
>> JAMAL SHAHIN: Thanks, Nadia. Maybe just bouncing off something Nibal said, I would like to emphasise the importance of the two‑way street. It's not just about disseminating global or filtering global norms, but it's also about ensuring the regional interests do get brought up to the floor.
Maybe if I go back to this issue of digital sovereignty. Of course this is a term that's been used the past couple of years around the IGF, around different fora to actually try to show how states themselves can actually build their own approaches to understanding how to regulate the Global Public Good that we're talking about. And here you see that there are tensions inherent in the kind of model that links the global, so we think global and work locally, but if we do too much work locally, then the global may be forgotten, and then we forget to think globally. We don't forget to think. But in that sense, the regional as a kind of filter can actually show that international cooperation does work. And I would be very interested also to see how the different regions learn from each other so, I mean, Nibal, you are the representative of all of the regions, and you actually mentioned that you do work with different stakeholders, and I assume and I know you work with ECA, ECLAC, and so on and so forth. It would be really interesting to actually find out how those interactions work in order to actually nuance the discussions that we have on digital sovereignty.
Maybe one thing I could add, and this is linked to ‑‑ Sophie has just walked into the room so I have to reference her now. I can't plaiger it. But she’d already mentioned something to me about the different ways in which this concept is actually used in regions. You have regions like the European Union where digital sovereignty is about managing complex interdependencies or managing interdependence, and then you have in the African Union you have the fund for digital sovereignty which is actually promoting national strategies in this area, but that's a regional organisation doing that. So you also see this concept being brought up in different ways as well according to different regions.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much. I was wondering if you Luis would like to provide any further insights regarding this question.
>> LUIS BARBOSA: Tacking on what Nibal was saying, I think there is a path that international organisations can do with three different dimensions, and one is exactly the representative, the voice thing that Nibal was pointing out which is very important. The other I think is synergetic. The way we can somehow contradict the more international base discourse is to address this kind of key enablers of digitalisation that is essential for people, infrastructure, connectivity, mobile payments across countries, crossborder problems, all these kind of issues, and the other is pedagogical if I can use this term.
Going into question 2, digital sovereignty in Africa is typically framed as an extension of national sovereignty, OK, and with firm roots in this political conception that comes from the Chinese model, if I can say so. And, of course, there is also an economic dimension, they try to protect their value shane, all these kind of things and it is very clear from all the documents from African Union, for example, Rhwanda’s national strategy or South Africa policy in data and cloud, this is very clear that the stress on self‑economic, self‑determination, ensuring local ownership and control overall data sets.
But we all know that this has different interpretations. For example, data localisation is very important in all these strategies and for countries as well. It's a coin with double face because often represents a will of, OK, we own our own data. We are protecting our citizens. Or maybe you are just having an easier way to spy on our citizens. So does it make sense to discuss data localisation in small African states by themselves. Could we do some pedagogical way of going a little bit further, optimizing mining resources and mainly trying to put in action a more civic citizen‑oriented way of understanding what digital sovereignty means. I think all these three dimensions, representative, the pedagogical and the synergetic should be taken into account as a way of going around the more national based, exclusively nation-based discourse that is dominating at least when we talk with ministers and other national agents.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: So we find ourselves with more questions to our question. That only makes it more interesting. Nibal, would you like to share more insights regarding work within your regions?
>> NIBAL IDLEBI: Yeah, OK, thank you very much. Thank you for the active discussion. I mean, exactly. We have more questions than answers. This is the era that we are living in. And however I would like to return back to this national sovereignty in the context of Internet and so on. I believe there is a – what is interesting at the international level is really also to make -- to activate the discussion at the national level among the different stakeholders. This is not something that happens all the time naturally, let us say because some aspects ‑‑ some of them are taboo still in some countries and then there is, I mean, the need to activate the discussion among the stakeholder, and this is really very important, and we notice that sometimes there is reluctance at the beginning but then later on people, government, and other stakeholders are quite well engaged in a way there is some insistence on this regard or there is some, how to say, the need to educate the discussion and to explain as I mentioned earlier, and this is really very important because we understand the importance of this.
And I believe another dimension maybe that is maybe in our context was important is to build capacity, to get capacity‑building. Some capacity‑building are very important because people need to understand maybe some aspects in better way. For example, we worked with many countries at legislation level, and the implementation, and the enforcement of legislation that is really needed in some cases. Then I believe then that discussion with high‑level decision‑maker is really very important to provide some justification or maybe sometimes explanation of this, of what is taking place at international level. Putting the stakeholders together, I mean, and making them interacting together, it is not easy sometimes, and this is where sometimes where the Regional Commission or some other regional stakeholder might play a very important role because sometimes we notice that discussion doesn't take place at national level unless there is external intervention, let us say, or external intermediator to have the discussion taking place. Sometimes, there is a need for some guidance to have this discussion.
And then this is what I would say at this stage, and I believe in the Arab region, based on some study that we have made, some discussion, what for a that we have discussed, that there are a lot of better awareness, let us say, amongst different stakeholders and among citizens on this aspect that are really important and some NGOs or some citizens, they are raising more of their voices towards ‑‑ to get some rights and to have their rights on the Internet in better way, especially in terms of freedom and the Internet access, to Internet and the freedom of expression, and, of course, cybersecurity and the related topics. And I will stop here for the time being, not to monopolize the discussion.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Well, we're very glad to hear your thoughts and ideas, and it's a clear request and a clear need for more meaningful participation, and I believe also that Jamal wanted to provide further input or further reflections. It's a discussion, and we also welcome members of the audiences. If you have any thoughts, ideas, questions, or perhaps solutions that you would like to see for the future, then you are very welcome to come up to the microphone or to leave a question in the chat. So in the meantime, Jamal, please go ahead.
>> JAMAL SHAHIN: I wanted to bounce off some of the things that have been said, and thanks very much. One of the things I think also the added value of the regional approach is that in some parts of the world, between 2015 and 2017, I was working on a project with the European Commission called JAGPO, the Global Internet Policy Observatory, which you won't have heard about, but this observatory was set up with the idea of providing information to all actors, all actors around the world who wanted to find out about Internet governance questions that were being discussed at the global level, and one of the reasons for this was that many countries that maybe don't have an established framework for understanding or leading or guiding in these areas would tend to go back to their imperial ‑‑ their colonial leaders, right, and would then implement a kind of yeah post colonialist version of a digital strategy that have been implemented in the form of colonial country, the form of colonial master. There was some form of neocolonialism in a sense emerging where countries were taking on the flavors, not of their region, which is, you know, what we're seeing now. With ESCWA, there is a sort of regional specificity but taking on often, well always a European type of digital strategy which maybe doesn't fit with the culture and the engagement actions there. That's something what I want to raise, that regional actors can actually bring together the regions to actually enable them to work together. I think that's what Nibal was saying and what you were referring to as well in your comment.
>> NIBAL IDLEBI: If I may? I mean, thank you, Jamal, and I would raise another dimension that there is this regional aspect where we interacted with other region, and in a way we copied or we borrowed some of their output in order to bring it to the region, for example, this is something that sometimes helps a lot. I mean, I would like to say something that we made that I was active for a long time in cyber legislation, and I would say that we really took benefit of the older cyber laws that took place in the European Union and that was enacted, I mean, it was drafted and, I mean, prepared for the EU, and really it was very good, I mean, material that would rely on to have the experience of EU to be copied or to be customized. I would say it is not copied as it is. It is never as it is. But it is taking the benefit of this long experience in cyber law. For example, we were able to customize it or to have some lessons learned from it and to customize it to the Arab region. We have in this regard some collaboration with ECA and some stakeholders in Africa who have some regional activity in this regard and where it was also interesting to exchange experience and to exchange even some lessons learned. This is what I want to say, to add.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much. And with this, I would like to actually go into the next question so that we have a little bit of a time to have discussion about this. So the third question looks to reflect upon the differences between global discourses on cooperation and practical implantation at various levels from local to regional and beyond. Let's start with Luis. Perhaps you could elaborate about you UNU-GOV's thoughts and ideas on the study on cooperation.
>> LUIS BARBOSA: Sure. I would like to stress two aspects that to me are very essential in having success in going ahead with cooperation and integration experiences. One is -- This was very clear from our experience with digital governance West Africa Forum. The need to involve other stakeholders rather than governments themselves. This has to be a dialogue with multiple voices, and often, these kind of stakeholders coming from the Civil Society, from the economical, cultural, social ecosystem make a very interesting contribution in fostering synergies and in easing the discourse. And the other is the need to articulate this debate, and this was also very clear on that experience with West African countries to frame this debate or articulate this debate with very clear and broader development objectives in terms of promoting additional economy ecosystem and getting people motivated from that.
Of course, there are several ways of addressing that question and doing what or taking this path, and certainly different regions have different ways and multiple ways to articulate different forms of governance across different sectors in the more vertical, horizontal way. We have a project, not at tech level of original integration, but we conduct a standard -- actually Morten was here, on the different models in different countries, in Asia, in Europe, and America, around the organisation, the digital transformation of social security that may bring some insights on how this can be – all these things that are articulated at different paths. I would suggest that Morten can say something about that in that perspective.
>> MORTEN MEYERHOFF NIELSEN: Thank you, Luis. It's an interesting issue particularly around the specific elements of governance, so obviously cast call is data governance. We want top framework, what are legal and regulatory framework on a domestic level. We see in particularly federalized countries, Australia, China, Brazil, where we're supporting the Ministry of Human Resources on social security on this specific issue, brings some additional complexity that we also see on regional levels, levels of autonomy. My data or the data sovereignty issue as in it is my data as a nation. It is my data as an organisation, and we sometimes forget when we talk about this data governance or sovereignty that, well, actually, isn't that what citizens sometimes tell government, that it's not government's data. It's my data. It's data on me, my family, my income. So these elements play out. But what we saw very clearly is it's not just about what we are already talking about about the governance model, about the frameworks, about the legal and regulatory systems and standards so we can map out the data. It goes to skills, formal internal processes about what do we do if we think the data is maybe incorrect?
How do we do that formally? How do we report back to the sister agency or the country next door where we get the data and say, sorry but you know, Jamal, you don't look 130 years old and sorry, Morten, why did you have an income of 23 billion last year? That seems a bit odd. What is the process for fixing that? so we don't have errors. Because errors are both bad service. It's also bad for decision‑making and politically it's also sensitive because there's nothing worse than telling the old lady that she can't get a pension because she's only 33 billion Euros when in fact she's earning 2300. So those are the type of things that came out very clearly in social security but particularly on the interorganisational exchange or even national regional exchange, and then when you see pilots like the Spaniards exchanging data with Uruguay on social security, we see it in the European context or African context, these elements become more prevalent and complex because we're suddenly not talking about national partners. We're talking about cross-border partners. Or we talk about federal countries where provinces and state have levels of autonomy so central government cannot necessarily, you know, specify or mandate a certain approach and need to be that flexibility within the framework.
So these are some of the things that came out in some very diverse cases from China to Denmark and even looking at the EU influence on national legislation on this topic in countries like Denmark and France where it's very clear that although the national approaches are different, they are aligning to what is thought as being the approach for the region at large, and that then allows that my local regional central government data can be exchanged in a meaningful way with a country somewhere else in the region because we have a common framework or common reference frame thing about certain things.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you for these examples and I would invite a member of the audience to join us at the microphone. If you could share your name and your affiliation.
>> Audience: Good morning. Mahesh Pera from Sri lanka. So I have a question for the esteemed panel. This is the topic on digital governance. From Sri Lanka, and we have been trying to digitalise the nation the last 20 years. Now, we have almost drafted a new strategy. As you said, citizens needs, it must be all about Citizen-centricness. Citizen has the control. As you said, I mean, how do you empower the people? How do you strengthen the government? How do you improve competitiveness in businesses. It's all about the strategy – utilization of the national strategies.
The question I have for the esteemed panel is I mean we had one institution who is accountable for this digital transformation which is not so successful over the last 20 years. Now, when it comes to drafting a new strategy, this strategy must be governed by a set of organisation or organisations. So what sort of characteristics or what sort of teeth and muscles this particular institution must entail?
I would like to hear different perspectives from the esteemed panel. Thank you.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much for your question. Perhaps we’ll first turn to Nibal online for your first remarks regarding the questions that were raised.
>> NIBAL IDLEBI: I believe this is really very important question, I believe, and it is really for many countries are struggling even with this, I mean. I believe that such a strategy, whenever the strategy should be really done or formulated in a way, in a collective way or discussed in collective way before its adoption. This is one of the lessons that we have learned that when you involve the stakeholder, the different stakeholder at the national level for the discussion about any future action that you are doing, especially strategy, it is very important to involve them from the beginning and to have them on board. Maybe they will not draft like you like the government, for example, but at least they interact with you, they give their idea, and then they’ll buy‑in later on in the future for the implementation of such strategy will be much bigger, I mean, and their involvement will be much bigger, and the involvement of all stakeholders from the beginning, from the start, and to have some interaction within regularly. This is done, I mean, this is first, and I believe there is in such for to have in a way trust in the public, in the ‑‑ in this strategy and its implementation. We have witnessed ‑‑ we have noticed that whenever there is a kind of quick wins in the implementation of the strategy or in the implementation of this transformation, then if there is quick wins where people see the result of this strategy, they can I hope to say they entrust the government much more, and they believe in this, and they will be more cooperative with that.
I believe having a kind of committee or a kind of committee for looking after the implementation at national level, not only from the government, I mean, it will have a kind of multistakeholder committee where many, many ‑‑ many partner at national level are involved in this committee, they will supervise or to follow, at least provides the implementation. It is really very important, and it gives some credibility to the government as well as the ‑‑ in that process. This is my two cents for that to answer this question.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much. Perhaps I will move to Luis.
>> LUIS BARBOSA: Thank you for your question. We actually have a long experience in supporting member states in designing and implementing national strategies for digital governance. We are not a consulting company as you know but you have this mandate of supporting member states in that direction.
And your precise question on who is going to take care of this. This is crucial, I think. In terms of -- of course different countries have different suggestions, different models. There are national agencies, ad hoc commissions, strategy committees, whatever. What I think is very important is to have a clear mandate for whatever commission or committee is going to go ahead with this. Clear mandates, strength by clear political will from government and with technical capacity as well. Often you get some stakeholders that are more multi-political representatives of different sectors, and this does not ‑‑ the other two points that I would like to emphasise and Nibal has already talked. The first one is absolutely crucial, the involvement of multiple stakeholders in designing, not only in designing but also in implementing and monitoring the strategy. I used to say in some of the countries that we have been supporting, that often the process of thinking about the strategy, designing it, is even more important than the final document itself because it is able to put people in dialogue, to build trust and to motivate institutions, so we have some elements of our experience that I would be happy to share with you at a later stage.
Yeah, there are some other aspect that I intended to mention but actually I forgot at the moment.
>> MORTEN: If I may, if I put my former Danish Civil Servant’s hat on working for the agency for digitisation, I agree with what Luis was saying. But I wanted to add an important detail. One thing that many countries forget in the consultation process is including regional and local authorities. In some countries local authorities have a very small service delivery role. It may be fixing potholes and a few garage collection things which are nonetheless essential things in a smart, sustainable city and community context, and often we see even with infrastructure rollout, such as intra-data distribution, electronic service standards, local and regional authorities are utterly forgotten in the national strategies. So there are also internal stakeholders.
On the mandate, it doesn't matter if it's a ministry of sport that has the mandate for digital or if it's an agency for digitisation. The name doesn't matter. It's the mandate and the recognition of that mandate and that requires there is actually a compliance mechanism. There's a carrot and a stick. Many government agencies, particularly large traditionally powerful ministries tend to run circles around newly‑established agencies for digitisation, et cetera, so the way you position it is, again, not relevant. It's the mandate and the strength of that carrot and that stick that comes with that mandate, so the cross‑governmental entities and collaborations forums are extremely important to get all the ducks lined up in a row. I think German Councellor (?) said it about EU integration, it doesn't matter how big or how small the ships are as long as they have the same port of destination in mind and we all get there at some stage, and so that's the same with digitisation. That's really important especially when we talk about regional cross‑border governments because regions and cities are the ones that have neighbors across on the other side. It's not the capital city.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much. As we start going into the final moments of our session, I would like to ask Jamal if you could highlight the practice between the Global Public Good, digital sovereignty, and cooperation.
>> JAMAL SHAHIN: Thanks, Nadia. I will try, and I will use the discussion that we've had a bit just now, and thank you very much for your question. I'll try and incorporate some responses in here as well. I think one of the things that we've realised here is that regional cooperation works as a kind of two‑way mechanism between the national level and the global level. So reflecting on how we can filter global norms and global practices or global norms, rather, and how we can use the national practices to influence or to shape those global norms as well. And you see that has been one of the key issues here that sovereignty in the United Nations system, for example, is something that everybody recognises. So sovereignty itself is kind of interconnected just like the Global Public Good we're trying to -- at least conceptually it is.
One of the other things that comes out of these questions about the regional and the global and the shift towards digital transformation in a sense that you were talking about is that regions can help with capitalising on experiences that have taken place elsewhere, so I think a lot of the issues where regions can help, and I know this is how I think ESCWA also does work, is on the peer‑review basis, something that the European Union has done, the OECD, it's not a territorial group. The OECD does this. They carry out peer‑review processes, allowing like‑minded states or states that have common issues to actually share information. And that has been done at the WSIS level, right. But this is a massive exercise, right, when trying to manage that at the WSIS level. The regional level can actually help facilitate because they can actually bring this stuff forward, and these countries that work to get to live together do actually share common interests and common challenges as well. So see that as being very important.
Also that peer review process, a corollary of that is the common capacity‑building structures that then emerge, and I think that's very important to raise here, that countries where, you know, this is the essence. I was born in Europe, and I'm now, again, a European citizen. But we realised that we needed to work together because we could not solve the problems around the world, so that kind of common frameworks actually do actually help in that sense. And then that kind of calls into your pedagogical issues that I think you raised. I'll stop there because I need to.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: During this session we looked at theoretical concepts of Global Public Good, sovereignty of cooperation, and also brought that into practical experiences and examples kind of understanding and allowing us to comprehend how it actually works in practice and the lived experiences of people. Nibal mentioned the roadmap that was created, and we hope that it will be shared and you can find it on the IGF web site, but also I encourage for you to join all the newsletters to stay up‑to‑date on what kind of developments are happening and how you can contribute to projects.
As we enter this last minute of our session, I would like to ask each of the speakers to perhaps give one key takeaway and one action point from this session that allows us to think about how do we move forward from here? One key takeaway and one action point. Perhaps we start with Nibal online.
>> NIBAL IDLEBI: Sorry for that. [ Clearing throat ]
I think that the most important thing that I would like to say that it is sometimes forgotten, that really that from regional to go to global, that regional actor or to be the voice of the region and to make heard the challenges, the national and regional challenges to get them to the international Forum. I think it is very important to stress on that.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much. Luis.
>> LUIS BARBOSA: Two very concrete things. One, to involve academia in this process. We have been making efforts to build networks and universities to build capacity but also to discuss these issues at the regional level, the continental level from the point of view of academia.
And the second is more than a challenge. I think there are a number of emerging ‑‑ not emerging because they have been there for a while ‑‑ problems but cross‑cutting problems collated with vulnerable people, displaced people, refugees that actually require a more global action, and this is a challenge, I think, at this level of integration we are discussing.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much. Jamal.
>> JAMAL SHAHIN: I am stressing now because I've got minus one minute. The key takeaway that I got is really there's a two‑way dialogue, regions shaping but being shaped, and the key call to action is I really want to pick up on what was said about participation in this framework. I think the multistakeholderism, the multistakeholder model has been proven to be worthy of consideration at the global level, this kind of issue at the regional level might be also very interesting to look at. Thank you.
>> NADIA TJAHJA: Thank you very much. So hereby, I would like to close this session and thank all the speakers joining here online and on‑site and, of course, the audience that are here and online, but also the staff here in Kyoto that are working really hard to make sure that this session is running smoothly and, of course, the captioners that make sure that these transcripts become available on the IGF web site for the people who would like to learn more about this topic but were not able to attend in person, so thank you to the captioners and perhaps any translators that have been working here with us today.
So I wish you all a really, really lovely final day of the IGF, and I look forward to seeing you the next time.
[applause]